Oh Joy!

Oh Joy!
Originally uploaded by Ryan Nowell Photography

Well I didn't get a chance to talk about how Puma bruised his tail on our last trip. It will have to wait till we get back from our Labor Day weekend trip down to Cottage Grove Lake for which we are about to leave for!!

Have a great weekend and stay safe!!!

Vacation On The Metolius

If you have checked our blogs lately and saw some pictures in the upper right hand portion of the blog.....you may have noticed some pictures from our recent vacation to Central Oregon. Emma and I both had the week off and we decided to head on out to central Oregon to camp and go on some nice hikes.

The first part of our trip we stayed at Cold Springs Resort. It was a cool place to stay and right on the Metolius River north of Sisters. We rented a "cabin" which was really a trailer made to look like a cabin with 2 rooms a kitchen and a bathroom. It was actually really very nice and cozy. The walls were covered in wood paneling and the kitchen was filled with everything that you would need for the weekend!! We liked it so much the guy running the place almost talked us into staying a few nights longer with some big discounts. But we already had our camping gear and wanted to get out and about.

So after the "resort" living, we packed up our gear and headed out to find the perfecet spot! Turns out that spot was only about 2 miles up the road called the Gorge Campground. It too was on the river and only 10 feet away. We really had a great amount of choices since it was in the beginning of the week and everyone was at work. Crazy part is we actually questioned ourselves on whether we picked the BEST one! So glad we stayed put.

Here are some pictures if you haven't seen them already....and i know you haven't....:)


Burnt trees near Round Lake

Cool cabin near a trail we were on. On the Metolius

Our "Cabin" #28

The Metolius River

View from our campsite.

I will post more when I upload more pictures to Flickr and tell you all about how Puma injured his tail!!!

Oh and thanks Jen for giving me a hard time for not posting....it worked!

Weekend Continued.....

So our weekend continued to be filled with more activities that we had planned. thinking we would be home most of the weekend turned out to not be so. While at Flugtag Emma received a text from a co-worker that a B-day party was going to start at 4. So we all headed over to our place to let out the dogs (oh that's right.....we were watching Nina and Marco again while their parents were out of town). Anyway, we went to the party which was really fun. I took the night off from taking any pictures so I have none to post.

The next morning after recovering from all the yummy food and home brew, we finally decided to tackle our wine barrel project. We had picked up some wine barrels from another co-worker (see post) and decided we were going to make some planters out of a few of them. The idea was to cut them in half down the center and use each piece as a planter for some more veggies to grow in the back yard. It sounded easy and the idea was great since one half costs $30 each at Lowes but it turned out to be a bit harder then we had planned. Of course with anything that we decide to do on our own has to have some sort of custom modification.

We first had the idea of using the new jigsaw or reciprocating saw and just cut down a line in the middle. Well of course that worked for about 30 seconds until we found out that after you cut one board of the barrel, the pieces pinch the blade and cause it to kick back. The design of the barrel is such that it really is only held together by the bands that go around and the grooves that each piece sit in. So we stopped to think about what to do next. TIME TO GOOGLE IT!!!

We found suggestions all over with people suggesting hand saws all the way up to chain saws! Well that didn't help.

So we moved on to figuring it out our own way. We ended up using a hand saw (goodwill special) to cut a line around the entire barrel and then finish with the jigsaw. It worked well but had to wedge a screw into each board after cutting 3/4 of the way through so as to keep it from again pinching the blade.

Once it was cut in half we added holes in the bottom for drainage and placed them in the garden.

My arm is still killing me from all the hand sawing. I must be wimpy compared to the folks back in the day that had nothing but hand saws. Maybe sitting in front of a computer doesn't help either!

Flugtag Portland

So its been a busy past couple of weeks. With a wedding and many cakes to be built and delivered, we haven't had too much time to relax or just do whatever. So this past weekend with not much planned we decided to head on down to the Flugtag on the waterfront in downtown Portland. We first met Andrea, Bruce and Sadie at the Screen Door for breakfast which was really great!!! Forgot the camera in the car or I would have had pictures of the enormous amount of food that we all ordered! The portions were so big that we had enough for leftovers for a few days which is always nice!

Then it was down to join the crowd for the festivities!! I am not sure how many people showed up but it was almost too many!! We managed to find a sliver of grass for 5 people to squat down on and waited for it to begin.

Emma and I had been to the first Flugtag that came to Portland in 2004 so we had an idea of what it was going to be like. I could describe what is involved but you can go HERE for a better idea. I was fun watching all the different "floats" or whatever you would call them go off the 25 foot tall ramp.

Here are some photos from the event.







More to come tomorrow on our "relaxing" weekend!